Miller's Crossing

If I were a professional athlete, no matter the sport, here's what I would do today.  I would take out my checkbook and I'd write a check (and make it big one) to my favorite charity in honor of Marvin Miller, who died today at age 95.  For it was Miller, that brilliant, hard union leader who brought power to the Baseball Players Association in 1966.   In the process, he took sports from the feudal era when players served at the whim of owners to a time of good contracts and free agency.   I'm not surprised that Marvin Miller lived as long as he did because he was as tenacious and tough as they come.  The one spiteful thing the owners kept from him was a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Malcolm Gladwell, writing today on the New Yorker web site, called him "one of the twentieth century's great heros."

Scandal

My ego is bruised.  I think I may be the only woman in America who hasn't received a flirtatious email from a Four or Five Star General.  What were they thinking!

All you have to do is get 50 pages or so into a John Grisham novel, or any of the other mysteries, and you can find out, in detail, how to hide your identify, become lost, move money, and generally get away with it.  Everyone knows by now that an email is a public document whether you intend it to be or not.  Except for the CIA?

No wonder so many women in the Army are being sexually harrassed, or worse.  The boys at the top are setting the tone . . . and the rules.

So now, could we please have Eliot Spitzer back as Governor of New York where he can resume his role as the "Sheriff of Wall Street."  And can Anthony Weiner go back to being the progressive Congressman from New York.

You Are the Story

First they tried to buy you
And you stood in line.
Then they tried to scare you
And you stood in line.
Next they tried to confuse you
But you stood in line.
Now, all they can do is admire you
Because you are still standing.

Who's All In

Cory Booker, the irrepressible Mayor of Newark, invited his blacked out neighbors into his home and served them lunch!

Dwayne Wade contributed his game salary to Sandy disaster relief.  The Knicks contributed big money and then rose up and beat the Heat.  Same for the Brooklyn Nets who won their very first game at the Barclay Center in Brooklyn.

Entertainers put on a fund raising concert Friday night that played over all of the NBC TV stations.

New York rocks!

And, of course, the shots of the fat man and the thin man may be the photos that define this elongated campaign.

So.  Did I miss something?  Did Jamie Dimon or the titans at Goldman pledge their bonuses to the Red Cross?  Did Donald Trump open any vacancies in his many golden towers to the folks over on Staten Island?

Paul Simon called it the "sound of silence."